limit
by fall from stars
Summary: ONESHOT—Together, we’re unlimited. SupermanxMaxima. Superman the Animated Series: Warrior Queen. AU.


**A/N: **I always did feel bad for Maxima: after all, the poor woman's dying for a guy who doesn't treat her like she's inferior to him, and all her good intentions with Superman kinda go awry. I went all-out AU on this sucker, went through like two-thirds of "Warrior Queen," and then mixed things up. Any feedback would be awesome!

**limit  
**

She comes barging in with self-importance and swords, locked in her expectations and hopes and _needs_.

That armor of hers does more than keep her safe, and she knows it: it's a way of protecting herself from anything less than what she deserves. It's a way of keeping out the filthy and the weak, of keeping away anything that doesn't meet her standards.

But when she sees him, done up in primary color regalia, a Kryptonian shield on his chest, floating ten feet off the ground, her mother's armor is as useless as scrap metal. It doesn't matter anymore because she knows what she wants.

She knows what she wants like she did the first hundred times, with men with nice shoulders and chins and smiles, who all went easy on her and treated her like she was nothing.

Nothing until they saw her smiling at the other end of her blade.

This one will be different, she thinks, this so-called Superman.

He has to be.

---

Underneath the Earth and its moonlit sky, she looks up at him with hopeful eyes.

"Please," she says, to him, without lips, stretching her mind towards him. "I need someone to love me."

Her small hands on his broad shoulders are so warm, sending heat soaring right through him.

"I need _you _to love me."

His eyes see only her.

"You'll love me," she tells him, her waist so small in his large hands. "You're perfect, and you're my equal, so you'll love me."

It is a command, not a request.

"I can give you anything you want," she coaxes. "We have no limits, by ourselves. And we will not when we are wed. And so I ask you: will you love me?"

"Yes," he says. "I will love you, Maxima. I will."

She kisses him, knowing the promise is devoid of the emotion she wants to hear.

There will be time for that later.

---

Together, they are fitted for their coronation robes. The dressmakers wrap their strings around her wispy waist, across his broad chest, over the middle of both their foreheads, all in deathly silence.

One of Maxima's handmaidens, in an attempt to stimulate conversation, breaks the silence.

There has been no Kryptonian king on Almerac for quite some time, she says. The alliance between the two powerful planets once held strong, as both races had power unmatched by any other. But when Krypton alienated itself from interstellar travel, communication with their sister planet eventually fell away.

"But yet, it's often been said Kryptonian men look best next to an Almeracian queen. They smile so brightly to be next to a woman as strong as they are," says the handmaiden, noticing that Kal-El has no smile.

Even in the wake of her words, his jawbones remain firmly in place.

"Perhaps you had best leave us alone," says Maxima, narrowing her eyes at the handmaiden. She makes a quick note that this one could be trouble.

There is a heavy silence after the steps die down, and Kal-El looks everywhere but at his future bride. Sensing his discomfort, she tells him he can do what he sees fit until she bids him come again.

"Thank you, my lady."

He flies away listlessly, leaving an odorless rush of wind in the throne room.

"Congratulate me," the Queen says softly to the empty room. "I'm getting married."

Her armor is, suddenly, almost too heavy to hold.

"Do you believe it?"

---

The wedding is a dry, listless affair. The colors she ordered from a neighboring looming planet seem faded and lackluster. Her dress, which was her mother's, is ill-fitted despite her personal staff's best efforts.

And the whole while, the love of her life does little more than nod his consent that she shall be his.

At the end of the ceremony, when the band is done playing her beloved nation's anthem, he is almost deathly still.

She turns to her new husband, the congregation expectant and watching, and she hisses: "Kiss me."

It is a command.

And like all good boys, he kisses her. She tries to make up his lack of emotion with too much of her own.

And she pretends that it is exactly what she's wanted, everything she's wanted all this time.

---

They learn to go throughout their days like this.

"Hold my train for me," she says, and he does. "Escort the prisoners to the dungeons," she says, and he does. "Kiss me good night," she says, and he does.

"Make love to me," she says, and he does.

He is perfectly trained, obedient, perfect.

Only his eyes betray him, and she catches it: she knows he's fighting this.

He wants to go home.

But of course she will never let him. Especially when this is his home now.

Surely he wouldn't want to leave a throne, surely he wouldn't want to leave her.

Surely, she thinks, while she's kissing him, while he's undressing her, while she's tumbling over and under him in their marriage-bed, surely this is what he wants.

But despite her best efforts, he keeps looking Earthwards, eyes straining to see it across the galaxies that separate him from it.

"Shut up all the windows for me," she says.

And he does.

---

But the people do not care for their new Kryptonian king.

There are whispers on the streets of a corrupt monarchy, of how Maxima's long-dead parents would be ashamed to see their little girl ruining the name they fought hard to establish. This Kal-El is nothing more than a tool, an extension of the Queen they have long loathed.

It is the people's strength against them, and only that, until a few handmaidens spill their secrets over fires unseen from the shut up palace windows.

A raid on the palace is planned.

But with their far-stretching ears, neither the King nor the Queen hear of it, don't hear it while Maxima smiles and undresses and says to her King, "Don't you think you may want a child or two, my love?"

He sits before her, unmoved, unimpressed.

Scowling, she forces his lips open.

"Whatever it is you desire, lo―"

And she swallows the rest of his words.

---

It isn't long before the rebels act on their plan, and her handmaidens inform her that it is hardly safe anymore. There is fire and fear in Almerac's streets, they tell their Queen, and surely they will see their city burn.

"Not while I'm around," she informs them, and rallies them all to fetch swords from the dusty room where the ancient weaponry is kept.

And all the while, Kal-El is motionless, and no matter which weapon she shoves into his fist, it clatters to the ground.

"Pick one of them up, you fool," she hisses. "They will not respond correctly unless you prove you are a threat."

"Killing is something I refuse to do," he says, _of his own volition_.

In the grand silence of the decorated throne-room she half-considers driving her own sword through that unbreakable heart of his.

"I am your Queen," she informs him, "and you will fight for me. You will kill for me. You will die for me."

He stands, stubborn, wordless, with his arms crossed over his chest, the Almeracian robes suddenly more ill-fitting than anything she has seen him in.

"No," he tells her. "I will not."

She has found his limit. Her own sword joins his on the ground.

"I understand, Kal-El."

She kisses him tight with the weapons and rebels tearing at the door, and she holds him tight, whispers into his ear: "I release you from my hold, Kal-El."

"Go," she tells him as the spell wears off, leaving him with a horrible headache. "Your destiny isn't here."

"But," he says, his lips numb from her kiss, "Maxima, why―?"

"You will not die today. Go home."

It is a command, not a request.

She throws her heirloom bracelet at him, sending him careening back through space, headed to the Earth he so dearly desires.

"I love you," she says to the empty room.

"Do you believe it now?"

The rebels break through the door.

She turns towards them, limited as she is.

And she does not pick up her sword.

---


End file.
